1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to technology for positioning terminals in a network.
2. Background Art
In recent years, delivery over the Internet of large volumes of information and content, such as video content, has begun. A wide variety of content is delivered on the Internet, ranging from textual information to images and movies. The volume of such content continues to increase every year.
To respond to the resulting increase in Internet traffic, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been compelled to intensify their physical infrastructure by investing to increase the number of communication lines, servers, etc.
Such investment, however, is extremely expensive. Increased importance is therefore being placed on technology for efficient delivery, particularly of large quantities of data, through effective use of fewer resources.
To address this need for efficient content delivery, Peer to Peer (P2P) technology such as BitTorrent™ or Swarmcast is becoming widespread (for example, see Non-Patent Literature 1, Patent Literature 1, and Patent Literature 2).
P2P refers to a network that establishes a direct connection between computers accessing the Internet. Specifically, P2P makes it possible for a terminal (computer), referred to as a peer, to use the computing ability of another peer connected to the Internet. P2P also enables peers to establish a direct connection over the Internet and exchange information or content.
P2P technology aims to achieve efficient delivery of content by saving part of content used by a participating terminal and providing the content to another terminal, thereby establishing a content delivery network.